Anonymous

Would I be right in saying that the mark is on the face of the weight...?If so its hard to believe that it would be a makers one. It looks more like some emblem etc that could well have been added at a later date

The fact that the "emblem" is within the dome suggests that it is either from a regular series with that type of "emblem" or that it is a one-off personal request item. But the "emblem" does not seem to be obvious at all to me, and according to my dictionary it's definitely not Arabic, Hebrew, Greek or Russian lettering.

The base finish looks as though it could be of Chinese (modern) origin. I have not personally seen a Chinese weight with that style of pulled "combing / feathering" so I cannot say it is or it isn't. But all the colours seem darker than is usual for Chinese work. Regular Chinese tend to have brighter shades of primary colours.

Hi, Checking one of my rubbishy magazines (there's a wealth of info/misinfo in these things that I like to be aware of!), the left half of the "symbol" looks just like Capricorn on the horoscope page, but missing a little extra "tail" on the "v"-shaped bit. What about the "I Ching", or something runic? - Sorry, I've no references for these. As far as star signs go, there is a 13th sign of the zodiac, Ophicaeus, which occupies the first 2 weeks of Sagitarius, but is ignored (the 13th being considered "unlucky" in "western/christian" terms), so it might be that (grasping at threads here!). Cheers, Sue

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Cheers, Sue (M)

Three Wise Women would have asked for directions, arrived on time, delivered the baby, cleaned the stables and made a casserole...

There tends to be a lot of variation in these symbols, all of the examples I have were handwritten. They do not look like Runic characters but could well be pictograms from some other writing system. I think that they are too eccentric to be letters.

Thanks everyone for your replies. Ive looked through lots of strange sites to find the star sign / Chinese/ ancient/ Egyptian but no luck.I thought at first that it was Chinese as it does have the 5 bundles of central red, yellow ,blue and white canes. However, the blue tint and the yellow-green combing made me think twice too.Jenny